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High schoolers to get maternity, paternity leave

The Ministry of Education has passed an amendment to the Regulations of Grading the Performance of Senior High School Students (高級中學學生成績考查辦法) allowing students to take pre-maternity leave, maternity leave, miscarriage leave, parental leave and funeral leave, the Chinese language newspaper China Times reported yesterday.

Under the new regulations, students who miss up to one-third of a particular subject’s total class time will not be failed and their schools must let them retake their courses and re-sit their exams.

The ministry said that the regulations would apply to all students, so male students will be able to take pre-paternity, or parental, leave to look after their partners or children. The report also said the ministry expects the new regulations to come into force within three weeks.

Currently students fail any subject in which they miss one-third of the total class time. Senior high school students who become pregnant usually quit school because continuing their studies is too difficult and they are not allowed to take pre-maternity leave or maternity leave.

In 2006, there were 153 female students in senior and vocational high schools that became pregnant, the ministry said. Of these, 102 of them attended night school while the remainder went to day schools and 94 of them were married, the ministry said.

The ministry has tried to keep track of pregnancies in senior high schools to facilitate counseling but officials admitted that this has been difficult and the actual number of students who become pregnant is higher than the ministry’s official figures.

Su Teh-hsiang (蘇德祥), director of the Department of Secondary Education, said that the new regulations are based on gender equality and guarantee the right to education.

Under the Labor Standards Law (勞基法), maternal leave can be taken for up to two months, but if senior high school students took two months of leave, they could miss one-third of their class time, Su said.

Under the new regulations, senior high students would no longer have to worry about failing because they missed too much school, Su said.


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